Winners and losers from an NFL and college football betting perspective

A football league may never want to draw parallels with the original 2001 XFL season, but at least one anecdote from the alternate Spring League’s first iteration applies to the 2022 NFL campaign.

Sportsbooks got confused by fixing game totals. The XFL over/under lines were almost never low enough to match the offensive struggles of the 2001 XFL games.

Heading into Week 7, NFL unders have scored in 61% of all competitions, a staggering mark that marks the highest win rate for the league since 1994, according to Action Network reports.

While the Unders cooled off somewhat in Week 7 games through Sunday, going 7-6 after a remarkable 10-4 mark in Week 6, bettors leaning on the Unders remain ahead. And the competitions that ended in week 7 under the number mostly fell well short of the overall score.

More than half of the seven fell by at least two touchdowns behind the over/under at FoxBet:

The Buccaneers and Broncos’ offensive ineptness has become breathtaking.

Not only are these bets strictly on both teams going 6-1 for the season, but Tampa Bay is averaging 12.6 points short of the total in its six sub-scores. And none came closer than 8.5 per Caesar’s odds.

Denver games are averaging 16.3 points less per game over Caesars, and none of the six have come closer than 10.5 points under the number.

The San Francisco 49ers lost a 20-17 heartbreaker in last season’s NFC Championship to a division rival, the Los Angeles Rams, who beefed up their midseason roster with bold moves. Perhaps on that template, 49ers Brass went all in in 2022 with a package of 2023 and 2024 draft picks traded to Carolina for running back Christian McCaffrey.

McCaffrey’s debut was promising, yielding 38 yards rushing and a pair of catches for 24 yards just three days after the deal. However, a defense that allowed just 14.8 points per game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday gave up 44. After keeping each of their first five opponents to 61 combined points with none scoring more than 19, the 49ers have conceded 72 combined over the past two weeks.

San Francisco is now a game under .500 and bottom of the NFC West, even with the Arizona Cardinals.

However, the lead is negligible: the division-leading Seattle Seahawks are only 4-3.

Should McCaffrey go on offense as hoped and the current defensive slump proves temporary, the 49ers offer +1600 Super Bowl odds at PointsBet – a small jump from the +1700 they were at prior to Thursday’s trading – the 49ers serious value.

Week 8 proved to be a good time to be among the best teams in college football — at least for weather.

Teams ranked 14th or better in the AP Top 25 for October 17 finished 8-3 against the Week 8 spread, with two of those losses to other top-ranked teams. In those instances, the 7-point underdog and 9th-ranked UCLA failed to close the gap at 10th-ranked Oregon with a 45-30 loss while Clemson’s 5th-ranked comeback in the second half against 14th-ranked Syracuse struck. 27-21, wasn’t enough to cover the Tigers’ 14-point number.

The only other senior team not to cover in Week 8, Ole Miss, was a point down in their 45-20 loss to LSU. But the state of Oklahoma — at No. 11 and an underdog in its own right to No. 20 Texas — more than covered the 6.5-point spread; The Cowboys recovered from two touchdowns to win 41-34.

Big 12 Conference championship competitor TCU made a similar comeback from 28-10 to Kansas State. The Horned Frogs’ 28 unanswered points not only helped the still undefeated TCU to a win on the scoreboard; It was also a win for Frogs bettors, who had Sonny Dykes’ team as favorites by 3.5 points.

After beating the fast-starting Kansas, TCU are now among the favorites to win the Big 12, ranging from +115 via Caesars to +250 via BetMGM.

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